Thursday, June 6, 2013

NB of the Week

-I DON'T READ THE SPOIL. THE SPOIL READS ME-

Earth 2 #13 - 1,370°C

Written by James RobinsonDrawn by Yildiray Cinar

While last week's annual was mostly about Atom, we did get the first introduction of the new Captain Steel and the setup for this week's issue. Years ago, after Sloan took matters into his own hands, he left fire-pits around the world, made by him, but from Apokolips technology. After being born with a defect that left his bones deteriorating, Hank Heywood's father replaced his skin (and most organs) with an experimental metal, Cap Steel is super-human strong and can control metal objects (not sure how the two are related but it works). Once a fire-pit in Rio is found to not be killing those around it, the two go head to head and Steel enters it in order to try and find anything new that can help. 39 hours later, a burning and smoldering Steel crawls his way out the pit, carrying a grave message:"There's something in there! Someone...! ...She's unstoppable! The Red Lantern! We have to save the world from her! Protect the Earth! If she ever gets out -- our planet dies!"
This issue just furthers how great Robinson is making things. One of maybe three books that has fully taken advantage of the new start that the New 52 was supposed to bring, each issue brings in another great concept. This issue also laid out something called the Red Files, where things involved with Apokoliptic tech is categorized such as Red Arrow and Red Tornado so a Red Lantern being part of this is really awesome and I think it's a safe bet to say that it won't be the same Red Lantern we've come to know in the proper universe. Sadly, it's all bitter-sweet as we know that Robinson is leaving the book with issue 16. DC had better put somebody great onto the book otherwise they will definitely be losing me as a reader of Earth 2.